Category: Forensics

Delivering training on Incident Response and Computer Forensics

Posted on by Ismael Valenzuela

I’m writing this post while seated on a train going from Birmingham’s International Airport to Banbury, a small town located in the heart of Oxfordshire. It’s only a 40 minutes trip but I really enjoy it, especially if I have a good album to listen to (like that of The Script I’m listening now), some coffee and the nice view of the English countryside I can see through the window right now.

I come to Banbury very often, like once every two or three months, most of the times to hold meetings with my team colleagues, to support ISO 27001 audits or to conduct onsite assessments. None of those are the main purpose of my visit this time. After delivering a new one-day session on Incident Response and Computer Forensics at my employer’s European offices in Leiden (the Netherlands), Bochum (Germany) and Warrington (UK), it’s now Banbury’s turn.

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From Brussels to Amsterdam calling at London and Sydney

Posted on by Ismael Valenzuela

That’s been what I call my ‘SANS itinerary’ since I started this exciting journey back in June 2007. It all started at SANS Secure Europe, in Brussels, where I took my first SANS class with Jess Garcia, CEO of One eSecurity and a good friend of mine. It was SECURITY 508, System Forensics, Investigation & Response, an awesome track created by Rob Lee on one of the most interesting and hot topics of Information Security. It’s been almost two years since then, but now I realize the tremendous positive influence that event had in my career as a security professional.

Early on the first day, I could see that was a different kind of training, far different from all the training sessions I had attended before, including the well-known CISSP bootcamp and vendor specific training like Checkpoint‘s and others I took in the past. Unlike those, this was real hands-on training, with lots of exercises and challenges, including the use of several virtual machines and an arsenal of security tools you can take home with you. Also, the amount of material you receive throughout a 6-day course is awesome. Someone described it like “drinking directly from a fire hose”. Actually, I can’t describe it better.

Add to that a friendly, relaxed but yet professional atmosphere, and the multiple opportunities you get for both networking and sheer knowledge with attendees and instructors and you will understand why Brussels was only the start.

SANS Secure Europe 2007

With Carlos Fragoso and Richard Fadul at SANS Secure Europe 2007 in Brussels

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A follow up on the Indian embassy issue

Posted on by Ismael Valenzuela

It’s been a busy two weeks trying to put together the training material I’ll be using to teach Incident Response and Computer Forensics to some of my colleagues in other geographies across Europe, Asia and Australia, and that will kick-off in Leiden in approximately 10 days. Meanwhile, the latest news about the Indian embassy reported earlier on this blog, spread quickly on the Internet.

Many sites reported on the issue, from antivirus vendors to security professional’s blogs and online magazines. Whilst most of them just echoed what others said, some shed more light on it posting some interesting notes and only a few did an in-depth analysis worth of mention, the most relevant being:

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